[mcv]

Professionalism in bike theft isn't so much about tools, but about organisation. Professional bike thieves will have a van, load it up with exactly the bikes they already know they can sell, and drive their load to the other side of the country (if your country is small like Netherland, that is), and sell them there. Or maybe sell them in a different country.

I've noticed that sometimes more expensive bikes simply don't get stolen while cheap ones do. I assume that's because of an easier market to sell them. There was a period when my son's children's bikes got stolen all the time, while my far more expensive cargo bike wasn't, despite it being only locked with a ring lock, and no chain. But of course a kid's bike is also much easier to pick up, and it had a very light lock.

[aigo]

That's really interesting and completely the opposite to here.

In London, most stolen bikes are expensive (or expensive-looking) and they are primarily resold within London.

[Freak_NL]

In the Netherlands they won't attempt to sell them here. Too much risk with frame numbers etched in and other ways of marking it. The safest bet is to move them out of the country on the day they steal them; way out to Eastern Europe.